It should be illegal to ask these questions in a job interview
We've come a long way, yet there's still progress to be made
In the hunter-gatherer days, you might have been banished. In the last millennium, you might have been tarred and feathered, or locked in a pillory in the public square. Since the first time two humans found a third and deigned to humiliate, exclude, and degrade him, our species has been innovating furiously, fine-tuning and perfecting new ways to diminish the human spirit.
Yet we must look back on these early efforts with the same benign condescension with which we regard the biplane, the covered wagon, and the Model T. For among the many blessings of today, we have the apotheosis of the form, the absolute height of humiliation, the abominable apex of abasement, a Concorde-among-zeppelins: the modern job interview.
At least when they held you down and covered you with piping hot pitch and freshly-plucked feathers, you were allowed to struggle and scream in protest.1 Even that has been taken from you when you push through those conference-room doors, or open that Zoom window. In today’s foremost public humiliation ritual, you have to pretend to like it.
Fortunately, to combat discriminatory hiring practices, our state and federal legislators have made many questions outright illegal to ask in job interviews. This is good and just, but the restrictions don’t go far enough. Here, I propose some more questions that should be illegal to ask in job interviews.
Why do you want to work here? What are you, crazy? You’re making an awfully big leap here, to assume that—just because I filled out the job application and showed up to this interview—that I want to work here. I don’t want to work here. I don’t want this job. To quote the astute labor analyst Eugene Krabs, “I like money.” Asking me why I want this job is like interrupting Andy Dufresne midway through his escape from Shawshank Prison with the question, “So, why do you like crawling through human waste?” The question mistakes the means for the end, and should be outlawed.
What are you passionate about? Lying to strangers to appear competent and impressive. Microsoft Excel. Streamlining processes. Engaging stakeholders. Frankly, I feel a little jittery and nervous if I haven’t engaged a stakeholder or streamlined a process in a couple of hours.
What are your career goals? I would like the amount of money I make to be more than the amount of money I spend, so that I’m allowed to keep living in my apartment.
Where do you see yourself in five years? Probably answering this question again.
What are your strengths? I am great at appearing engaged in zombie standing meetings that have long since outlived their original purpose and that I have no role in—I will close my laptop and look pensive as you think through undercooked ideas in real time, and will gladly repeat something someone else said with different verbiage if you ask for my opinion.
Are you applying for other jobs? No. I am loyal only to you. I love you. Other jobs are a candle to your sun, a weak breeze to your passionate hurricane. The very thought of applying to another job fills me with rage and contempt.
Do you have any questions for me? Yes, can I please go now?
Notes:
Why did I write this? Job interviews are just kind of strange, and probably mostly filter for people who are good at job interviews—this is probably correlated with job skills in some cases, and not with others.
What I’m reading: Finished Their Eyes Were Watching God, and starting Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain about the Sackler family & the opioid crisis. Since you asked, I’ll share another great excerpt from Zora Neale Hurston: “Insensate cruelty to those you can whip, and groveling submission to those you can’t. Once having set up her idols and built altars to them it was inevitable that she would worship there. It was inevitable that she should accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from theirs. All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.”
I want to set the record straight: I never said that the American Revolution was a “terrible idea propagated by traitors to our glorious, beneficent monarch King George III, may he reign forever.” What I said was, “I think we should be more open to compromise, and forming our own nation could cause as many new problems as it solves.” I do admit that this happened in 1997.